Part 24

He pitchforked a few necessaries into a battered suit-case, left a pencilled note upon the lid of Mrs. Hazel's large, responsible Red Cross work-basket--for his mother now invariably left home directly after breakfast, for the Work Rooms in Mayfair--where, in the delectable company of Duchesses--she spent the hours in the manufacture of Life-Saving Waistcoats for the Fleet, and felt Hospital slippers, until six-thirty. Consuming luncheon, carried in a plated box, and rigorously relegated to such forms of nourishment as may without reproach be assimilated by patriotic British digestive organs in War-time; taking a frugal tea on the scene of activity; and returning at seven to partake of a dinner of generous succulence. Having thus discharged his duty as a son, John departed by taxi for King's Cross, catching the very next express leaving for the North....

The room he had previously occupied at the _Cross Keys_ was vacant. He stepped into its queer conglomeration of ancient smells, and the glass-eyed society of the birds and beasts and fishes in their musty cases, and it might have been that he had never gone away, but that Mrs. Govan in person served his supper in the clammy coffee-room, a part-knitted khaki-coloured sock, bristling with steel knitting-needles, tucked under a stout arm, and the ball bulging the pocket of her apron of black silk.

"Eh, dear!" Mrs. Govan had ceased to address John as "Private" since she had realised his somewhat indeterminate yet undeniable connection with "the family" at Kerr's. "Eh, Mr. Hazel! but this is grievous! ... And to think that I met Cornel Yaill wi' the meir an' cart the vera' nicht he cam' down to atten' the Funeral. Gin' auld Sir Philip cud have kent! But Providence was mercifu'. And sair it has irkit me to think o' Miss Forbis a' alane there at Kerr's, like the last aipple on the strippit tree, as I hae said to Govan, an' telegrams rattlin' ower the wires wi' 'Reply Paid' to the lave o' them--from a' the warld and's wife, beggin' an' prayin' till her: 'Darling Katharine, let us come to you, or if not, winna you come to us,' and gettin' answer: 'A thousand thanks, but no. Lovingly, Katharine.' An' sae, when I e'en kent she had sent for ye, I juist drew a free sough."

Evidently there had been a serious leakage from the Cauldstanes Telegraph Office. John mentally registered the evidence as Mrs. Govan continued:

"Ye'll have haird the latest news o' Cornel Yaill, dootless?"

"Has he been found?" her guest inquired, eliciting the shrill disclaimer:

"Na, na! We'se hae the Police traipsin' in an' out the bar makin' their inquiries--an' the wee laddies in the short breeks--the Boy Scouts I suld say! scoorin' ower the face o' the lan', but neither bone nor feather o' the man hae they fand for a' their pains! And mair nor me an' Govan thinks," she pursed her lips mysteriously, "that it'll be no' for's ain guid when they rin the Cornel doon--wherever's his hidie-hole! Weel free o' siccan a mislaird rogue Miss Forbis may coont hersel! Marriet on a stranger wumman--faugh!--an' the bauld, traipsin' craitur huntin' him doon, un' telegrams to the verra door o' Kerr's Arbour. 'Have knowledge whaur ye are. Return instantly, or I will follow. Your wife, Lucy Yaill.' Set her up for a shameless hussy!--an' the brawest leddy in Tweedshire--ay', an' the haill o' Scotland--wi' grand, gentlemen many a ane etchin' to pit a ring on the white hand o' her--"

Mrs. Govan broke off in the midst of her tirade with a sense of genuine alarm. For the blazing black eyes under the heavy brows of John Hazel were sternly set upon her; and the great hooked nose--"siccan glowering e'en, an' siccan a hawk's neb!--eneuch to fricht a body!" seemed fraught with threatenings of doom to come. He said in his deep voice:

"Miss Forbis will hardly thank you for your praise of herself personally, if you couple with it such confoundedly libellous abuse of her nearest and dearest friend."

"Guidsake! ... I'm sure I never thocht.... To be sure naething is kenned for certain.... Ye'll keip it frae Miss Forbis, sir, if I said onything to offend! ..." and the flurried woman bumped down the dish upon the cloth and vanished, leaving John Hazel wondering why on earth he had stuck up for the man.

He slept with the stuffed birds and beasts that night, and next morning, after breakfast, the mare Brownie being under the veterinary for a chill, the old black horse, her stable-companion, having been sent to the blacksmith's for roughing, and Alec Govan's motor-cycle having been requisitioned for the postman's uses--John set out on foot for Kerr's Arbour.

It was piercing cold; the east wind carried the bitter tang of the North Sea, the country lay under a fresh cloak of new-fallen snow, and the chilled thrushes and blackbirds and robins huddled disconsolately in the cropped hedges, and the low bushes and plumps of ivy swaddling old tree-stumps in the plantations by the roadside. As John Hazel's long active legs left the miles behind--what was a road ankle-deep in snow to a Territorial who had wintered in Flemish trenches!--he wondered somewhat as to the nature of the service Katharine Forbis would require at his willing hands.

Help, it might prove, in some further efforts to gain intelligence of the man who had vanished so suddenly.... Who could not be traced, nor ever would be, until the body should be found.... For Edward Yaill was dead, most certainly. Once Katharine Forbis had showed you plainly she despised you, how could you bear to live any more? Yaill had had that much of manhood left in him. So he had gone out with a definite purpose,--and in some dense plantation, or lonely granite quarry, thick-draped with curtains of bramble, had shot himself; creeping well in under the growths to be securely hidden, and died--and there an end of him....

Odd how those miserable grey eyes, with their haunting stare of agony, kept rising up before John Hazel, as he tramped over the hog-backed Roman road over which how many old dead-and-gone Forbis of Kerr's had led their bow and spearmen against the Picts, or Viking pirates from the wild North Sea; or pricked forth to the Wars of Balliol or Bruce--or set out in state and pageantry, with fair ladies in painted litters, or on gaily-caparisoned palfreys--to the Court of the Scots' King at Stirling or Edinburgh. And he wondered at the strange, impersonal love he felt for them, so brave, so bold, so tender, so gallant and gracious--from the Roman Prætor of Alexandria--who had given the black onyx ring to his (John Hazel's) ancestor--down to Sir Rupert the Cavalier, and the fine old General and the lost Julian, and Katharine....

Ah, Katharine! ... Again he saw her noble face irradiated by the glow and glamour, the mysterious beauty that transfigure even a plain woman when she loves with all her soul.

And then the face of Yaill, with its anguish and despair, rose up before him clearer than ever. He heard the compassionate voice of the V.A.D. woman saying:

"His wretched, _wretched_ eyes! ... I _hope_ I'm not going to dream of them! Oh! there _must_ be something to be said for a man who looks like that! ..."

Suppose the man were innocent--the luckless sport of horrible circumstances! ... Had John Hazel been of Scottish blood, he would have said, "I'm fey." Being what he was, he said vigorously, "I'm a bally idiot!" and continued tramping along the snowy road.

Past the hollow way, crossed by a strip of ice, where the snow on the overhanging trees was thawing in long drips and splashes, and the benumbed birds showed more active signs of life. Out of the hollow way, on the left a dense plantation, on the opposite side to, and about a quarter of a mile below the iron gate of the entrance to the Kerr's Arbour private road.

XXV

A whistle shrilled near by, keen, sharp and silvery. John Hazel stiffened at the sound, as a seasoned soldier will. But nothing was in sight but a wee tow-headed laddie, "a kid" John would have called him--in a ragged suit of moleskins, cut down from adult-sized garments, who perched on the topmost round of the hog-backed stile leading into the plantation, and blew a shining whistle, from which a lanyard hung.

The small boy saw John start, and thrilled with secret exultation. To own a silver whistle and have no one to admire you is really little better than having none at all. So he blew again, lustily, with one eye on the big black "soger," and John Hazel pulled up steaming, and passed the time of day....

"Who are you, you queer little beggar, and where did you get that whistle?" he began.

At this the small boy scrambled down from the gate, and came to the roadside. He was a freckled child of eight or so, with wide gaps where first teeth had retired from the conflict, and a nose that sadly needed wiping, and broken festering chilblains on his swollen ears and hands. But his sharp blue eyes were bright on the stranger's as he answered:

"I am nae no beggar ava, but Meggy Proodfoot's wee laddie. An' I fand the bonny whistle in yonner woodie the morn."

By the jerk of the cracked and swollen thumb John guessed "woodie" meant plantation. He said, blowing out his long brown cheeks, and scowling with mock ferocity:

"That's a real soldier's whistle, not a thing for a kid to play with. You should give it to your daddy. He's a soldier, I suppose?"

The small boy returned, grinning:

"I dinna ken--for my daddie is no' a kirk daddie. Some say he maun be Keeper Todd, but my mother says it's no'! She's thinkin' he's the engineer that cam' wi' the steam-thrasher,--an' she ca's me a puir come-by-chance when she has a drappy on. I'm no mindin'!" The freckled face turned up to John's grinned hardily:

"Give me hold of that whistle a minute, you infantile philosopher," said John Hazel, and took it in his hand. It bore the silver hall-mark,--was an officer's signal-whistle. On the butt was engraved in clear fine letters:

"E. A. Yaill (R.C.) Lieut. Col. R. Tweedburgh Infantry Regt."

Here was the clue. Was the secret hidden in that plantation? John Hazel's face became so grim that it terrified the boy.

"Gie me my whustle back, man, an' let me gang awa' hame, noo! Ye'll no tak it fra' me?" he stuttered, blinking back the tears.

"I must take it from you, for I know the man who lost it. But I'll give you half-a-crown instead, to buy another," said John.... "You'll like the new one awfully!" ... John added as the coin changed owners. "And I'll give you another sixpence for sweeties if you'll tell me what else you found in the wood."

"Naething at a' but a bit o' broon cloth--soger's cloth like yon--" A stubby finger pointed at John's sleeve--"stickin' oot o' a tod's howe, an' the bit white string near by."

"You mean the lanyard. Well, then--"

"Eh, then I pu'ed the wee bit string an' the siller whustle cam' oot wi't, an' sae I took the whustle an' ran awa' to pley. An' when I saw ye comin' I thocht ye were the Man. Noo gie me the bawbee!"

"You mean the sixpence! Tell me about the Man you mean,--and earn a shilling instead."

"Ay! The Man was dressed like yoursel is--but grand, like an officer, wi' gowd on his bonnet an' sleeves, an' mair ribbons on his breast. No the day's day, but back in the week, I'm thinkin' it was Monunday!--I seen him comin' doon the road, an' he fleyt me wi' his een."

"He scared you with his eyes? What did you do then?"

"I bude to rin awa' at first, because 'twas gettin' fell mirk-like. An' sair I wantit my tea and lardy-piece. But I didna' rin ower far. I muntit the fence an' keeked roun' a buss, an' saw him loup in ower. An' he gaed intil the woodie, an' cam' oot nae mair!"

Come By Chance pointed with a chilblained hand to the stile of the plantation, and brought the hand deftly back to show its empty palm. The shilling having followed the half-crown into a pocket of the cut-down corduroys:

"Hae ye anither?" the recipient demanded avidly.

"No, but I might give twopence more to hear how the Man came out."

"He didna!"

A shadow seemed to fall on the brightness of the snow, and the wind's bite grew keener. John Hazel echoed:

"Didn't come out? Are you quite sure?"

"Ay, yea! for though I hing aboot to see, he showed nae bone nor feather. An' at lang last--when I'se fell hungert for my piece--an' fain to rin hame to my mither--anither man louped oot intil the road, an' cam' alang by."

"How do you know it wasn't the Man?"

"Because he was no' braw like the ither! He had nae gowd on his bonnet, an' his claithes were hamely like my daddie's,--or they wad be, gin my mither wad own that my daddie was Keeper Todd."

John Hazel suddenly knew that the chill shadow had passed, and that the sun was shining. And he tossed another shilling to Come By Chance, saying:

"There's another bob for you, you queer little rascal. Cut before I change my mind and want the money back!"

And as the tow-headed took to his chilblained heels, revealing in his hurried flight that his shirt-tail hung out through a ragged hole at the back of his corduroys, John Hazel jumping the hog-backed stile, dived into the plantation. Something told him that he would come out much wiser than he went in.

XXVI

The dull tramp of heavy Service boots, following the maid who was that day John Hazel's guide, over the carpeted stone flags of the corridor to the little panelled morning parlour, brought an unexpected, welcome sense of relief to Katharine's overstrained nerves. The door opened, and she moved swiftly to him--stopping him with both hands held out, when he would have made his strange, half-Eastern salutation--saying in her full, womanly tones:

"How can I thank you, Mr. Hazel?"

He answered, tritely and clumsily, but with very evident sincerity:

"By showing me straight off the reel, how I can be of use to you."

Some aching spot in her sore heart was touched by his genuine eagerness to serve her. For a moment she could not speak.... So they stood, her fine white hand engulfed by Hazel's great brown one, his strong black eyes, unrebuked, dwelling on his lady's face.

She looked older, with wide purplish shadows round about her beautiful eyes, and their clear golden-amber changed to sorrowful rust-colour. The clear cream and carnation of her skin was dulled to a pale olive.... The rich brown hair upon her temples, and above her brow, showed here and there a thread of silver. She began, speaking with a curious, hurried breathlessness:

"Mr. Hazel, I know you must have seen newspaper accounts of the inexplicable disappearance of--a friend who--I have no need to hide the fact!--is very, very dear to me.... You must know that I speak of Colonel Yaill. You saw him here the Saturday you came here first, and later at my father's funeral. You--_Ah--!_ ..."

Her eyes were on John Hazel's when the memory leaped into them. They dilated, blazed with tawny fire.... John thought of a lioness.... She snatched her hand instantly away from his, crying:

"What am I thinking of? Why,--it was you who threatened him!--he told me so himself! You said you would save him the trouble if he did not tell me of his marriage. How could I have forgotten? Is my memory failing me? And you.... How could you have come by the knowledge with which you menaced him? ... In Hospital? ... No! Where and how, then? The whole thing is a horrible mystery to me! ..."

John Hazel told her, in a few bluntly-spoken sentences, just how the story of Yaill's marriage had been given him. She heard him to the end of it, and said, with the ghost of a smile:

"So you entered upon your hereditary office of champion, straightway. And Lady Wastwood got the story from her Headquarters--I understand the whole thing clearly! She is a dear, and I love her, but a terror of a talker.... The whole county must have rung with scandal, ages before I dreamed that anybody knew...." She shuddered. "Oh, me! what things they must have said about Edward!--must be saying about him at this moment when he--"

Her voice broke in a sob, and her full heart brimmed over. John Hazel said roughly, for he could not bear to see her tears:

"They may talk, but there's one thing nobody on earth--or elsewhere!--will ever be able to say of him. That he isn't a thundering brave man!"

The sudden, fierce carnation that had flooded the wide oval of her face a moment before, had given place to the olive paleness. Now a faint tinge of the banished red came creeping back again.

"You threatened Edward Yaill--yet you defend him?"

John Hazel answered simply enough:

"I had to see that you were undeceived. You were, first of all, my business. But knowing what shell-shock means--as men have learned to know the hellish thing in this damned War--how, in common justice, can I condemn Colonel Yaill?"

"Thank you! Oh, thank you! That does my heart good!"

The wide, sweet smile curved Katharine's mouth again, and her dimmed eyes found a sparkle to cheer their sombre rust-colour. She went on:

"To know that somebody besides myself pities him--you don't know--you can't know, what it means to me! For no one will have a kind thing to say for Edward. Beyond the newspaper flummery and flapdoodle, there won't be a word, nor a thought, that isn't--merciless to him! ..."

She was sitting now in her hearthside chair and John was standing on the other side of the fireplace. The antique mirror above the little Tudor clock, that had reflected Yaill's thin, handsome face and haunted grey eyes, gave back an image of the huge black head, the portentous hooked nose, and swarthy countenance of this new and strangely dominating force that had moved across the threshold of Kerr's Arbour, out of the veiled, mysterious Past, but a few days previously. His elbow rested on the mantelshelf, where the other man had leaned his: he clenched his great hand as he answered Katharine:

"'Merciless.' ... And why on this rotten little planet should people be merciless to the man?"

"Because"--she frowned and looked at John from between her narrowed eyelids--"because of the odd, clandestine fashion in which--after his strange marriage--Colonel Yaill has gone away.... I am not brilliant, it may be, nor very highly cultured. But I know, and very thoroughly--the world to which we belong. I speak, be it understood, of his world and mine." John felt himself an alien. "The world we choose to call Society. And Society will never pardon nor condone, nor exonerate this act of Colonel Yaill's."

"Do you think the pardon of Society particularly worth having? Do you think the good opinion of a Society as fat-headed, as thick-witted and as narrow-minded as you represent it--matters a tin of ration apple-jam? ... Now listen, Miss Forbis! If you think me rude, an offensive brute, say to yourself, 'This man can't help it! He isn't in Society--but he is out to work for me! The wag of a finger of my hand would bring him from the ends of the world to serve or fight for me!' Please don't interrupt, for time is time--and I have more to say--"

He drew a big breath that hurt his wounded lung, and went on speaking:

"When you sent for me, I believed you thought that Colonel Yaill had put an end to himself. When I saw you I knew you had never for a minute entertained the idea--"

She broke in now:

"Never! The suggestion of suicide has been spread by people who know nothing of the man they slander. In absolute confidence I will tell you now--for how could you be of any help to me unless I absolutely trust you!--Edward Yaill has gone to the East to find my lost Julian--my dear brother, whom I have since heard was killed on August 21st--"

John Hazel's black eyes flashed. He broke in:

"Miss Forbis, something of that sort is what I have suspected."

"Wait," she said. "_He_ told me that he would not return to--to his wife--upon the old footing.... She had cruelly tricked and deceived him--he could not, once he knew the truth--endure to live with her! ... So he made up his mind to go secretly away. He might have applied to the War Office--he has powerful friends at Whitehall--for a transfer to the Eastern Front. Why didn't he? That's one of the things I can't understand! ..."

"Don't you know? ..."

John's big voice boomed out, drowning the little silvery chime of the Tudor timepiece.

"When questions like that crop up, the answer is, shell-shock. A man who is possessed of ordinary, healthy nerves, will act in an ordinary way. But the man who's been subject to the devilries of High Explosive, will pop up queer byways in his impatience of circumlocution--adopt unexpected measures; reach his objective by methods as destructively simple as--the rat's way of getting into a cheese. He _might_--supposin' he'd been a normal man--have engineered the thing at Whitehall. Being shell-shocked, he simply burns his boats and swims."

Katharine begged:

"Oh, go on! You're helping me!--you're helping me wonderfully. Things that seemed crazy--out of the comprehensible--are beginning to arrange themselves.... Now there's another point. You saw, perhaps, a newspaper reference to Sir Arthur Ely? Well, it has occurred to me as possible that Edward confided his plans to Sir Arthur--that impenetrable sarcophagus of Society secrets. You may have noticed that Sir Arthur's reply to Press inquiries showed a--a considerable degree of reserve?"

John had noticed it. He admired Katharine's cool, clear, masterful way of assembling her evidence, and making her points tellingly, each in its turn. He kept back his own solid piece of conviction until she finished--

"He has gone, I am convinced that I know where--though I can't make out how he managed going.... But one thing is clear. I must get word to him! ... He has gone to find Julian, whom he loved!--my Julian, who was killed by a Turkish shell, in the storming of Scimitar Hill on August 21st. That is where you come in!--that is where you can help me. In getting the news through to Colonel Yaill in case he does not know! ..."

John thought a moment and said:

"We might--in case he has gone out to the East believing your brother to be living--get the news to him _per_ advertisement in sundry foreign rags. Personals, discreetly worded, might do the trick--inserted in French and British papers, published in the Levant,--in Egypt,--and at Salonika, and in such others as are printed and disseminated by the Germans in the Near East."

She caught her breath.

"Can you manage that last stroke? ..."

"I'll not swear I can, but there's a chance I may engineer it. Write out the ads. and let me have them at once! In English, French and German. Worded so that he'll understand.... Some ought to be in Turkish,--and others in Arabic, and some in Egyptian Arabic. For--your man's a bit of a linguist, unless I judge him wrong!"

Katharine's eyes brightened with pride in her man as she answered:

"He speaks most of the languages of the Orient, and Nearer East."